Samsung Galaxy S7 release date, price, specs, features

The Samsung Galaxy S7 is set to be unveiled on February 21, and we already know quite a lot about this upcoming device. The latest rumor concerns the camera bump, or lack thereof. Check out what we know about the Galaxy S7 release date, price, specs and rumors below.

Samsung Galaxy S7 release date

On January 31, Samsung officially announced Samsung Galaxy Unpacked 2016. The event is set to take place on February 21, and is where Samsung is expected to announce the Galaxy S7.

The YouTube video announcing the event prominently features the Samsung Galaxy VR headset, while the video caption suggests we should “get ready to rethink what a phone can do”.

We’d expect the Galaxy S7 price to be pretty high, if the Galaxy S6 is anything to go by. However, in November, Chinese analyst Pan Jiutang speculated that the Galaxy S7 will see a 10 percent price drop compared to the S6 at launch. This is contrary to common sense, but in line with an evolving market and Samsung CEO Kwon Oh-hyun’s adapt to survice call.

A leaked image published on China Mobile puts the Galaxy S7 in the more-than-3,000-CNY price range, which means it will cost more than US$460 – nothing surprising there.
Samsung Galaxy S7 specs

Samsung employee specs leak

GSMArena and VentureBeat both reported that a source claiming to be a Samsung employee shared a host of details on the Galaxy S7 specs.

All variants of the device are said to come housed in a black frame, with a choice of black, white, silver or gold finishings, and the disagreeable camera bump is apparently now gone from the rear of the device.

On the subject of the camera, the sources both confirmed that Samsung has dropped the megapixel count from 16 to 12, and the f-stop is now a very appealing 1.7. Samsung plans to market the camera as being extremely adept at taking night shots, thanks to the lower aperture number, increased sensor size and dual-photodiode technology, which you can read more about in the camera section at the bottom of the page.

The pair of sources also confirmed that the S7 will be dust and waterproof, will house a hybrid dual SIM slot, returning support for microSD cards, up to 200 GB, and will have an increased battery capacity – all things that had previously been rumored.

The size, resolution and a number of other S7 specs were confirmed through another leak coming via phoneArena.com. The leak comes in the form of a photo of a presentation slide, showing the S7 as part of the evolution of the S series.

On the slide, the device is given a 5.1-inch screen with 1,440p resolution, a 12 MP BRITECELL camera (find more information on this in the camera section, towards the bottom of the page), 4 GB RAM and the Snapdragon 820 or Exynos 8890 processor. None of this is new or surprising, but it does begin to set long-running rumors in stone.

AnTuTu and Geekbench specs leaks

Benchmark platform AnTuTu released the specs of a device with the model number SM-G935A. The model has a 5.1-inch QHD screen, suggesting that the specs belong to the standard Galaxy S7 model. The device sports a Snapdragon 820 processor with the Adreno 530 GPU. It runs Android 6.0 Marshmallow, has 4 GB RAM with which to do so, and boasts 64 GB of internal storage.

Another device, which also appeared to be a Galaxy S7, was put through its paces over at Geekbench a couple of days later. This model appears to be powered by the Exynos 8890 chip, rather than the Snapdragon 820, but otherwise the specs are the same as those on the device that went through AnTuTu (above).

It scored a more than respectable 1,873 and 5,946 on the single- and multi-core tests, respectively. For comparison, the S6 scored an average of 1,513 and 5,177 in our Geekbench test last year.

A Snapdragon 820 Galaxy S7 ran through Geekbench later in January, offering the opportunity to compare it with the Exynos 8890 model benchmarks shown above.

The device scored 2,282 in the single-core test, beating the Exynos 8890 and 4,979 in the multi-core, where it lost to the Exynos 8890.

Its multi-core defeat is unsurprising, given that the Exynos 8890 has twice as many cores.

A further Geekbench result cropped up via phoneArena.com: a second European model powered by the Exynos 8890 chip. This model scored a significantly lower score than the previous Exynos device: 1,358 in the single-core test and 4,911 in the multi-core. The most likely explanation for this is that we’re looking at the results of various prototypes being tried out at different clock speeds.

Battery bump to 3,000 mAh

VentureBeat has reported that that the S7 and S7 Edge will both have larger batteries than their predecessors. The S7 is said to pack a 3,000 mAh battery, and the S7 Edge, a 3,600 mAh battery, an increase of 450 and 1,000 mAh, respectively. Removable batteries remain off the table, however.

Galaxy S7 Snapdragon 820 exclusivity rights

A rumor to take lightly emerged on Weibo on December 16 and was picked up by gforgames.com. The post suggested that Samsung might have exclusive rights to the Snapdragon 820 chip until April 2016.

If this were true, it would mean that Samsung has secured at least a month of sales where it has the only handset on the market that is powered by Qualcomm’s powerful new chipset. It would also mean that other smartphone manufacturers would be forced to withhold their own 820-powered devices, leading to a stagnant start to 2016 for the Android world.

Galaxy S7 could use three different chips, including Exynos 8890

SamMobile reported that Samsung is planning to use three different chips for the S7. SamMobile’s source suggests that it will use its own Exynos 7422 chip, originally intended for the Galaxy Note 5, for the Samsung Galaxy S7 in India, with the Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 earmarked for China and the US, and the Exynos 8890, for Korea, Japan and Europe.

The Exynos 8890 is rumored to feature a custom, in-house designed CPU core. The report, which was published on October 28, 2015, says the custom core is tentatively named M1. The move would mean Samsung is the third company, behind Apple and Qualcomm, to produce its own custom core.

Speculation continued to mount through January 2016, when Samsung announced that it began mass production of chips using its second-generation 14-nm FinFET process technology. Most interestingly, this technology is used by the Snapdragon 820, which will be among the chips being manufactured at Samsung’s foundry in Korea.

Snapdragon 820 performance benchmarks

Chinese site Weibo posted benchmarks of two versions of the Snapdragon 820 against the old 810. The yellow bar represents the Snapdragon 820-A and the red represents the 820-B. The green is the Snapdragon 810.

The results show that the Snapdragon 820-B variant performs 1.38 and 1.77 times better in single-threaded integer and single-threaded floating tests respectively, compared to the previous generation Snapdragon 810.

It appears that the 820-B model is the latest version of the Snapdragon 820 in development, but whether it is the 3.x version that was rumored earlier remains to be seen.

AnTuTu performance benchmarks

In late November, GSMArena posted an AnTuTu benchmark, said to be from a device running the Exynos 8890 chipset. The score was ludicrously high – over 100,000 – which comfortably beats the impressive score of 65,000 set by the Kirin 950 chip (now in use in the Huawei Mate 8). There’s no way to confirm whether the result – supposedly leaked out of China – is real, but the model number of the device it refers to is SM-G9300, which is believed to be the Samsung Galaxy S7.

Galaxy S7 could have 6 GB of RAM

In September 2015, Samsung launched the industry’s first DRAM chip that would allow smartphones to run 6 GB of RAM. The company said it will appear in “next-generation flagships”. The new chip is reported to perform 30 percent faster and consume 20 percent less energy than Samsung’s previous LPDDR4 module. If it does make an appearance on the Galaxy S7, it would surely make it the fastest smartphone in the world.

Galaxy S7 design

In early December, a report from Korea suggested that the Galaxy S7 design will be very similar to its predecessor, the S6.

Renders put forth by the reputable Evan Blass in early February showed the Galaxy S7 from both the front and the back. The device in the images looks similar to the Galaxy S6 in every way, aside from marginally thinner bezels and a larger home button.

The camera bump, bane of the Galaxy S6’s behind, is strongly rumored to have been shorn down to a much more acceptable 0.8 mm. So, it’s not gone, but it is significantly smaller than the Galaxy S6’s 1.7 mm bump.

Samsung Galaxy S7 features

MicroSD card

A late-November rumor, which came via HDBLOG.it, suggested that Samsung might reinstate a microSD slot in the Samsung Galaxy S7. This gained serious traction in January – with a source close to the project telling VentureBeat that the S7 and S7 Edge will feature microSD card slots compatible with cards up to 200 GB – and has now been all but confirmed by the AnTuTu leak specs leak above.

Keyboard cover

A rumor has surfaced which suggests that the Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge could come with a keyboard cover, like the one below. According to SamMobile, Samsung could release an S View Cover, Glitter Cover, Clear View Cover and a Keyboard Cover for the Galaxy S7 and Galaxy S7 Edge. This is almost certainly a hat-tip to the BlackBerry Priv and its physical keyboard.

In mid-November, a rumor arose via gforgames.com suggesting that there might be a premium edition of the Samsung Galaxy S7, exclusive to South Korea. The rumor suggests that the premium device will use a 14-core version of the Mali T880 GPU featured on the Exynos 8890 chip, as opposed to the 12-core version that will be common to the S7. Not only that, but the device may feature a 4K screen and dual-lens camera module.

Galaxy S7 Force Touch technology

A patent filed by Samsung in April 2014 strongly suggests the company has been working on its own 3D touch technology. It describes a system where different voltages result in different options being selected. So, a hard press gets you a capital letter, a softer press, a lowercase letter.

Diagrams from Samsung’s 3D touch patent.

An earlier post on Weibo suggested that Samsung is one of the companies partnering with Synaptics on their ClearForce technology and that is it looking to use it in the Samsung Galaxy S7.

Both Samsung’s own patent and ClearForce appear very similar to Apple’s 3D Touch, which it implemented on the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus, or the Force Touch technology found on the Huawei Mate S 128 GB version. Whether Samsung has continued developing its own technology or has indeed partnered with Synaptics remains to be seen, but it does seem that 3D touch tech is almost certain to appear on the Galaxy S7.

Samsung flirted with similar tech on the Galaxy S4. It featured Air View, which enabled you to hover your hand over the screen for extra options.
Galaxy S7 display

The Galaxy S7 display size is now all but confirmed as 5.1 inches. SamMobile.com reports that Indian import and export site Zauba is listing two devices, apparently the S7 and S7 Edge, with screen sizes of 5.1 and 5.5 inches, respectively. The listing showed two units of each device, with all four carrying valid IMEI numbers, imported into India from South Korea.

Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge release date, price, specs and rumors

Other rumors suggest that there may be also an S7 Edge Plus model, with a screen size of anything from 5.7 inches (Reddit) to 6 inches (uSwitch). See a video from the latter source below:

The January AnTuTu specs leak claims the S7 will have a QHD display resolution.

Samsung is said to be priming an alternative to Corning’s Gorilla Glass screen protection with something known as Turtle Glass. If this rumor is true, we will likely see the new technology on the Galaxy S7.

The Galaxy S7 rear camera is all but confirmed as a 12 MP number, accompanied by a 5 MP front-facing camera. The AnTuTu specs leak above has added weight to previous claims via gforgames.com and Reddit.

This is a reduction in pixel count compared with the S6 camera, but Samsung is said to be looking into other ways to improve the quality of the camera, namely through an increased sensor size and dual-photodiode technology. This essentially places two diodes on each pixel of the sensor, allowing each pixel to record a pair of parallax images, which are then brought into alignment, increasing the focus quality.

A source for Android Geeks leaked information in mid-January suggesting that Samsung is planning to implement a camera feature called either Vivid Photo or Timeless Photo intended to rival Apple’s Live Photos. The feature works by capturing 1.5 seconds of video before and after a photo is taken. The idea being that when you choose to view your ‘Vivid Photo’, the scene appears to briefly come to life.

Samsung is said to be discarding audio capture from the video, unlike Apple, in order to allow the clips to be uploaded to Facebook as GIFs more readily.